Pattern portfolio by Esther van der Drift

Hi there! My name is Esther. In daily life I'm a user experience designer in the hospitality industry. In layman's terms: I design interfaces and screens that are pleasant and efficient for people to interact with. I like to spend most of my evenings and weekends illustrating fashion, working on my website or getting to know my new dslr camera.

I've always been drawn to repeat patterns and dreamed about one day designing my own collection (literally!). I just never knew where to start. But when I signed up for a premium membership on Skillshare, I received an email about a session by Bonnie Christine on surface pattern design. I saw it as a sign, a virtual kick under the butt to really get started this time. And here we are... the third and final class in the session where I show you my end result. Woohoo, I'm so excited!

PROCESS

I wanted to make a physical portfolio, but since book binding materials are quite hard to come by in my country, I decided to get a simple photo book printed with my designed pages instead.

I created a new document in Illustrator with 19 artboards and dumped pretty much everything I made over the course of the past couple of weeks onto my pasteboard. There were several patterns that didn't make it into the final collection, but I did mess around with them a bit for my portfolio book. I also recolored a fashion illustration I was working on earlier last week because it really seemed to go well with the mood I had going on.

PAGES

I wanted to show you a few highlights from the pages I designed. Scroll down to the bottom of the project to find the link to the online version with all the pages.

Page 3: Table of Contents. My illustration found a nice place next to the table of contents. Looks like a legit It Girl if you ask me!

Page 6: The story page. I also added a cute little ribbon to tie the page together.

Page 8: the full collection. I rearranged and resized the patterns a little, but other than that I didn't change much.

Page 15: samples. I used Photoshop, Redbubble, Zazzle and Society6 to create mockups.

Page 18: Of all the pages in my portfolio, I had the most trouble with this one. In the end I think it turned out alright though. I like the way my 'handwritten' name from the cover comes back on this page.

I also ordered a small photobook with my pages which arrived earlier this week. The pages are nice and glossy, although the colors are slightly off (probably has to do with converting CMYK colors to RGB). But it's nice to have a physical copy of all my hard work!

SOME FINAL THOUGHTS

Thank you so much for viewing my portfolio. Let me know what you think in the comments below!

I'd also like to thank Bonnie once again for the three incredible courses you taught on Skillshare. I had a really good time learning and interacting with other students passionate about the same things. Keep up the good work everyone!